9 ms·

Breaking Down the Chrome Web Store

154 points by flysonic10 7y ago

nbar1 7y ago
The below information is incorrect. Chrome HD Themes has the most extensions, not most downloads Original comment: That "developer" is Chrome HD Themes and the extensions are themes.
- flysonic10 7y ago
  The developer is FreeAddon
- flysonic10 7y ago
  Yea, the title refers to the author that is prolific by installs (FreeAddon), rather than the author that is prolific by extensions (Chrome HD Themes). Chrome HD Themes has over 6k published extensions!
  - flysonic10 7y ago
    Just ran the query to find that Chrome HD Themes has only 51,724 installs across now 6064 extensions.
flysonic10 7y ago
Some other stats: - The most popular category is “Productivity” accounting for ~40k extensions and 676M installs - Google itself authors 155 extensions accounting for ~133M installs
- warent 7y ago
  Extensions are included in Chrome installation, so I can't help but wonder what the actual numbers would be for Google extensions that don't do that.
  - flysonic10 7y ago
    ooo.. I'll get on that. There are in fact 10 default extensions. Will filter them out...
    - flysonic10 7y ago
      Looked into this. Turns out that the default extensions report 0 installs, so the original number is correct. Though, the latest number is now ~137M installs.
ajhurliman 7y ago
Chrome extensions are such a massive vector for unwittingly giving away all of your data. The fact that they're near impossible to monetize combined with the fact that people click through the permissions screen so easily makes it a prime target for scraping people's data.
- egfx 7y ago
  If I could get 1/10th that many installs on https://2fb.me https://2fb.me I’d make a million dollars a month.
  - kilroy123 7y ago
    How exactly?
    - flysonic10 7y ago
      Yea, I'm also curious.
      - ajhurliman 7y ago
        I'm guessing by scraping/ selling data. How else do chrome extensions make money?
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - bluedevilzn 7y ago
    Mind elaborating, how?
  - point78 7y ago
    Carr to elaborate
    - egfx 7y ago
eternalny1 7y ago
4+ million installs for "Search Encrypt" which seems to fill the 1/2 half of the results page with advertisements. But, you get the benefit of "SSL encryption". The other features (don't save your search) just seem to make it a bad version of DuckDuckGo.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Search Encrypt is malware[0], and it's install base are generally not consensual users. I've seen it around for a very long time, and Google isn't doing anything about it. New Tab-hijacking extensions are incredibly pervasive in the Chrome Web Store, and often installed via malicious websites which use arrows and audio cues to demand a user click the "Install" button Chrome pops up in order to resume web browsing. MapsGalaxy is another particularly pervasive malware offering: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mapsgalaxy/ijjnmdphpnlnelhbhefnfmimenjgbfcn https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mapsgalaxy/ijjnmdp... (Just adding this one here in case someone from Google sees this comment and can nuke both from orbit.) [0] https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/rogue-searchencrypt/ https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/rogue-searchencrypt... and any search result should give you some idea: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=search+encrypt&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=search+encrypt&t=ffab&ia=web
typpo 7y ago
As the creator of several popular Chrome extensions, once you reach about 10,000 installs people will start contacting you to acquire the extension. In particular, I created a native ad detector that was briefly popular[1]. In my experience, acquirers will go after extensions that have permissions to modify any page. My extensions were open source and had no clear path to monetization, so I can only speculate on how the purchasers planned to recoup their investments. The permissions in these extensions would allow them to inject ads or even collect credentials, etc. Not saying that the top extension developer does this, but people are definitely making money by collecting innocuous Chrome extensions! [1] https://www.ianww.com/ad-detector/ https://www.ianww.com/ad-detector/
- AznHisoka 7y ago
  SimilarWeb and Jumpshot acquire extensions so they can gather data on the websites you visit. They then sell this data to other companies for marketing/intelligence purposes. I hope Google can close this loophole soon (anyone from Google listening? dustballs)
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Anything that weakens Google’s ad-targeting advantage is bad for Google, so I could see them interested in restricting telemetry.
  - steve19 7y ago
    Chrome desperately needs a trigger whereby an extension can access a site's data only if there has been an interaction such clicking a button on the toolbar or the right click menu.
    - factsaresacred 7y ago
      It exists - activeTab: > The activeTab permission gives an extension temporary access to the currently active tab when the user invokes the extension - for example by clicking its browser action. Access to the tab lasts while the user is on that page, and is revoked when the user navigates away or closes the tab. https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab
phit_ 7y ago
this seems to be incomplete? lots of popular extensions are not listed, or am I misunderstanding what their top list is? e.g. RES with 2.2M users isn't mentioned at all https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement-suite/kbmfpngjjgdllneeigpgjifpgocmfgmb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement...
- flysonic10 7y ago
  The top list lists only the top extension in that category.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  They say the list is the most popular extensions by category. RES is in the productivity category and presumably was omitted in favor of the 10 extensions in that category with 10M+ users. And productivity is the largest category so there are probably dozens more in the gap between 10M+ and 2.2M.
  - flysonic10 7y ago
    Yes, and since we don't have data past 10M installs for any given extension, all of those are essentially tied for the top spot.
point78 7y ago
The only important question is what is his revenue
- flysonic10 7y ago
  ...and where does it come from?
kgwxd 7y ago
If I had a browser that had the content-filtering power of uBlock Origin (uncrippled) built-in but, to avoid conflict of interest, relied solely on the community to build filters, I wouldn't even need extension support.
- ummonk 7y ago
  I haven’t used it, but my understanding was that is exactly what Brave does?
  - pythux 7y ago
    That’s the goal, but they’re not there yet. Quite a few things are missing to match uBlock Origin (Or other popular adblockers).
- loeg 7y ago
  I like having 1password. And the ability to impersonate other User-Agent strings for broken webpages. Tampermonkey doesn't hurt. And camelcamelcamel... and Stravistix... Yeah, I kind of like the ability to install extensions for use cases the developer doesn't and can't think of themselves.
Ftuuky 7y ago
Maybe some charts instead of just tables?
- flysonic10 7y ago
  What would you like to see? I'll make some.
stanislavb 7y ago
I spent some time recently building my first extension ... and let me tell you, it's not that easy promoting one at all :) If you are interested, it might be helpful to you. It's contributing to the winning "Productivity" category. It lets you see the competitors of almost any software product. Contextually. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alternative-to-by-saashub/bfllfmelefabahclnehpdocekedapcbj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alternative-to-by-...
amelius 7y ago
This website detects when I move my mouse towards the back button and then shows a "before you leave ..." popup. Creepy.
- flysonic10 7y ago
  It's an "exit intent modal"
crispyporkbites 7y ago
Don’t. Use. Chrome.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

154 points by flysonic10 7y ago

The below information is incorrect. Chrome HD Themes has the most extensions, not most downloads Original comment: That "developer" is Chrome HD Themes and the extensions are themes.

flysonic10 7y ago
The developer is FreeAddon
flysonic10 7y ago
Yea, the title refers to the author that is prolific by installs (FreeAddon), rather than the author that is prolific by extensions (Chrome HD Themes). Chrome HD Themes has over 6k published extensions!
- flysonic10 7y ago
  Just ran the query to find that Chrome HD Themes has only 51,724 installs across now 6064 extensions.

flysonic10 7y ago

Some other stats: - The most popular category is “Productivity” accounting for ~40k extensions and 676M installs - Google itself authors 155 extensions accounting for ~133M installs

warent 7y ago
Extensions are included in Chrome installation, so I can't help but wonder what the actual numbers would be for Google extensions that don't do that.
- flysonic10 7y ago
  ooo.. I'll get on that. There are in fact 10 default extensions. Will filter them out...
  - flysonic10 7y ago
    Looked into this. Turns out that the default extensions report 0 installs, so the original number is correct. Though, the latest number is now ~137M installs.

ajhurliman 7y ago

Chrome extensions are such a massive vector for unwittingly giving away all of your data. The fact that they're near impossible to monetize combined with the fact that people click through the permissions screen so easily makes it a prime target for scraping people's data.

egfx 7y ago
If I could get 1/10th that many installs on https://2fb.me https://2fb.me I’d make a million dollars a month.
- kilroy123 7y ago
  How exactly?
  - flysonic10 7y ago
    Yea, I'm also curious.
    - ajhurliman 7y ago
      I'm guessing by scraping/ selling data. How else do chrome extensions make money?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- bluedevilzn 7y ago
  Mind elaborating, how?
- point78 7y ago
  Carr to elaborate
  - egfx 7y ago

eternalny1 7y ago

4+ million installs for "Search Encrypt" which seems to fill the 1/2 half of the results page with advertisements. But, you get the benefit of "SSL encryption". The other features (don't save your search) just seem to make it a bad version of DuckDuckGo.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Search Encrypt is malware[0], and it's install base are generally not consensual users. I've seen it around for a very long time, and Google isn't doing anything about it. New Tab-hijacking extensions are incredibly pervasive in the Chrome Web Store, and often installed via malicious websites which use arrows and audio cues to demand a user click the "Install" button Chrome pops up in order to resume web browsing. MapsGalaxy is another particularly pervasive malware offering: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mapsgalaxy/ijjnmdphpnlnelhbhefnfmimenjgbfcn https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mapsgalaxy/ijjnmdp... (Just adding this one here in case someone from Google sees this comment and can nuke both from orbit.) [0] https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/rogue-searchencrypt/ https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/rogue-searchencrypt... and any search result should give you some idea: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=search+encrypt&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=search+encrypt&t=ffab&ia=web

typpo 7y ago

As the creator of several popular Chrome extensions, once you reach about 10,000 installs people will start contacting you to acquire the extension. In particular, I created a native ad detector that was briefly popular[1]. In my experience, acquirers will go after extensions that have permissions to modify any page. My extensions were open source and had no clear path to monetization, so I can only speculate on how the purchasers planned to recoup their investments. The permissions in these extensions would allow them to inject ads or even collect credentials, etc. Not saying that the top extension developer does this, but people are definitely making money by collecting innocuous Chrome extensions! [1] https://www.ianww.com/ad-detector/ https://www.ianww.com/ad-detector/

AznHisoka 7y ago
SimilarWeb and Jumpshot acquire extensions so they can gather data on the websites you visit. They then sell this data to other companies for marketing/intelligence purposes. I hope Google can close this loophole soon (anyone from Google listening? dustballs)
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Anything that weakens Google’s ad-targeting advantage is bad for Google, so I could see them interested in restricting telemetry.
- steve19 7y ago
  Chrome desperately needs a trigger whereby an extension can access a site's data only if there has been an interaction such clicking a button on the toolbar or the right click menu.
  - factsaresacred 7y ago
    It exists - activeTab: > The activeTab permission gives an extension temporary access to the currently active tab when the user invokes the extension - for example by clicking its browser action. Access to the tab lasts while the user is on that page, and is revoked when the user navigates away or closes the tab. https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab

phit_ 7y ago

this seems to be incomplete? lots of popular extensions are not listed, or am I misunderstanding what their top list is? e.g. RES with 2.2M users isn't mentioned at all https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement-suite/kbmfpngjjgdllneeigpgjifpgocmfgmb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement...

flysonic10 7y ago
The top list lists only the top extension in that category.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
They say the list is the most popular extensions by category. RES is in the productivity category and presumably was omitted in favor of the 10 extensions in that category with 10M+ users. And productivity is the largest category so there are probably dozens more in the gap between 10M+ and 2.2M.
- flysonic10 7y ago
  Yes, and since we don't have data past 10M installs for any given extension, all of those are essentially tied for the top spot.

point78 7y ago

The only important question is what is his revenue

flysonic10 7y ago
...and where does it come from?

kgwxd 7y ago

If I had a browser that had the content-filtering power of uBlock Origin (uncrippled) built-in but, to avoid conflict of interest, relied solely on the community to build filters, I wouldn't even need extension support.

ummonk 7y ago
I haven’t used it, but my understanding was that is exactly what Brave does?
- pythux 7y ago
  That’s the goal, but they’re not there yet. Quite a few things are missing to match uBlock Origin (Or other popular adblockers).
loeg 7y ago
I like having 1password. And the ability to impersonate other User-Agent strings for broken webpages. Tampermonkey doesn't hurt. And camelcamelcamel... and Stravistix... Yeah, I kind of like the ability to install extensions for use cases the developer doesn't and can't think of themselves.

Ftuuky 7y ago

Maybe some charts instead of just tables?

flysonic10 7y ago
What would you like to see? I'll make some.

stanislavb 7y ago

I spent some time recently building my first extension ... and let me tell you, it's not that easy promoting one at all :) If you are interested, it might be helpful to you. It's contributing to the winning "Productivity" category. It lets you see the competitors of almost any software product. Contextually. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alternative-to-by-saashub/bfllfmelefabahclnehpdocekedapcbj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alternative-to-by-...

amelius 7y ago

This website detects when I move my mouse towards the back button and then shows a "before you leave ..." popup. Creepy.

flysonic10 7y ago
It's an "exit intent modal"

crispyporkbites 7y ago

Don’t. Use. Chrome.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]